Weekly Reckoning: Blonde Revision Edition

1. JUPITER’S GREAT RED SPOT IS SHRINKING One of the most amazing space facts of my childhood involved the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. I read all about it: a permanent storm, an angry red pustule on the skin of the largest planet, a reminder of unimaginable cosmic fury. Apparently it’s not as permanent as I was led to believe, because it’s been shrinking noticeably and changing shape over the last few decades. Who fed me the lie of the eternal storm of Jupiter? Was it Carl Sagan? Probably Carl Sagan.

2. DON’T MILLENNIALS UNDERSTAND RACISM? Hah hah, millennials are dumb. Dumb like gravy. And racist! They’re racist because they think that thinking and talking about racism is racist, and that empty platitudes about equality constitute a serious statement about the world. Those millennials should all just go back where they came from, which I suppose is the luminous void of eternity. No, I kid. Millennials are needed to replenish our dwindling supply of cranky old racists.

4. THESE PEOPLE AGAIN The Royal Family just can’t get enough of Canada. And we can’t get enough of those long-faced castle dwellers who incarnate the foundations of our law and government.

5. NORTH KOREAN EXECUTION ONLY TEMPORARY Remember the story about the former girlfriend of Kim Jong Un getting executed by firing squad? Apparently they’re really cutting corners on death sentences these days, because she just appeared on television. Granted, it’s possible to record someone as an electrical signal on magnetic tape and reproduce that signal at a later date, thereby granting the recordee a form of crippled immortality, but that appears not to be the case here. The lesson here is that North Korea is weird and that we can’t believe any news that comes out that vortex of totalitarian unreality.